The Week

A Good Week For. . .
An Obssessive-Compulsive Mother's Heart. When it was discovered that her six year old son could make this:

look like this. . .

. . .within 15 minutes, without supervision. Not 'cause he wanted to (he was being punished), but it's nice to know that he's been trained well. Here's hoping he'll make a career as one of those professional organizers on Hoarders. Blech!!

Self-Esteem. To think that this:

came from Josh and I, you figure you must be a little cuter than you thought you were.

S.O.S. Pads. (Or a bad week for them, depending on how you think S.O.S. pads garner their self-worth) Since ALL of the elements on my new stovetop are dishwasher safe. Hurrah! It almost makes up for the fact that I have a black stovetop. I said almost.


Hoarders. (In case it isn't abundantly clear, I'm obssessed with Hoarders) While at McDonald's today, I looked at Lila's Madame Alexander doll toy and thought, "Do you think there are people who actually collect these?" when, not five seconds later, a woman (who looks just as you'd imagine) shows her mother the TWO sets of dolls she'd bought to complete her collection. Of McDonald's toys. Those people are weird. And probably rich off of E-bay.

Self-Preservation. I went to a movie by myself last night and, as I sat in the dark movie theater, eating my huge box of candy, I became a little less of the giant frazzled mess that I was when I left home. And I even went home after the movie, rather than check into the motel for three days as I'd threatened. Thanks, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman, for a kinda weird, semi-amusing movie. Let's be honest: most of the thanks goes to the candy.

A Bad Week For. . .
Clean Clothes. Lila has given up on the highchair. Since it's much easier to feed herself at the table, where her food is at nose level.

Blockbuster.

The Binghams finally joined Netflix. We've never been movie people, so we didn't really see the need. But now we get the hype. Those geniuses at Netflix and their instant streaming! All this for $9 a month? I easily pay $9 a month in overdue fees at Redbox. As much fun as it's been, waiting in line for Redbox along with the people without teeth, I'm gonna have to say Adios!

Of planes

Looking out the back door of the library

The end of August in Hillsboro brings the amazing annual Hillsboro Air Show. People come from all over the place to...well, what do you do at an air show? All we know is that it is annoying because there are people on lawn chairs everywhere staring up at the sky and about every 4 minutes our house rattles as some sort of jet buzzes overhead. If you have ever tried to put a toddler down for a nap during an air raid, then you know what I am talking about.

Since I would rather have my hair miraculously regrow only to have it fall out again than go to the actual air show, we decided to take the kids to the library where we could get some books and feed the ducks that live in the pond in the park out back. Conveniently, the library is located right next to the Hillsboro airport, which meant getting there involved going past three separate police barricades and explaining that we just wanted to go to the library. (But isn't that what we would say if we were really going to set off fire bombs on the runway?) When we made it, there was nary a soul there. Good day to choose books! And, there were also very few ducks there - they were hiding from the blitzkreig as well. So the duck feeding would go from this:

to this as jets buzzed over head:

Jonah decided that while we were there he wanted to start a nature collection. The collection was based on two key nature items. Acorns and Box Elder Beetles.

Somehow, Jonah caught about 40 box elder beetles (that might be an exaggeration) and would force a new one into his hand without letting the others go, which Amy and I thought was super gross. Here are the trapped beetles fighting for freedom:

Lila wanted to spend all day in the tunnel that goes under the road so that she could yell and listen to the echo. I even took some video, but discovered that the still picture was much more charming without the screaming (and echos) in the background.

It turned out to be a great outing - all of the fun of seeing jets fly in formation overhead, and none of the annoyance of actually attending an air show. I tried to get a picture of a plane in flight, and while I would love to write an entire blog about how the camera app on my android phone is clunky and has a poor interface and lacks the grace of the iPhone camera app, that's a whole other Oprah. I didn't get any plane action shots.

But I did get this one of Lila and a flower:

And this one of the kiddies.

And just because they are cute - Lila amongst the tomatoes:

Test Post: Lila likes spaghetti

I want to see how this whole private blog thing works, but I didn't want to just send out a test that said test...so here are some pictures of Lila liking spaghetti.

I remember once on my mission for Halloween we made a "spook alley" for the members in the basement of one of the church building. It had all the usual trappings of a spook alley - zombies, guys with chain saws, etc. As the Italians walked through they would say "Che cos'e'?" What's that? And we would explain, "Oh, well that is a guy with a chain saw - see, he is crazy and he might kill you...so..." and they would say. "Oh." and smile and move on. At the end of the spook alley, we had a guy with pounds and pounds of spaghetti pouring out of his shirt. He would lay there and moan and groan and eat the spaghetti like he was eating his own guts. We called him "Spaghetti Guts Guy." When the Italians saw him, they would say "Mangia spaghetti molli freddi??!?" Is he eating cold, over-cooked spaghetti??!? And that would cause them to run in terror.

End of test post. (That story is 100% true, FYI.)

We're going black ops

Hey all. Amy and I have decided we are taking this blog private. I wish it was so that it could be a SUPER EXCLUSIVE blog full of awesome INSIDER information. Mostly is is because we realize that we post a lot of pictures of our kids, and our last name, and pictures of our house, and we want to be safe.

Do you know that I am the king of the worst-case-scenario? If I am ever just staring off into space, I am usually imagining what I would do if a tsunami hit, or if the zombie apocalypse finally started (Insider tip: head north. The zombies will freeze) or if an axe-wielding psycho kicked down the door. So I don't love the idea of a lot of our private information being out in the ether for any crazy to see.

I do, however, love to use this blog to keep connected with family and friends and want to keep that going. We will do our best to invite everyone who we could think of might be interested in reading this blog. Don't be offended if you don't get an invite - it probably just means I don't have your most recent address in my address book. And really, we are not exclusive. Come one and all, unless your name is ikillbabies@hotmail.com. So if you want to be sure to get an invite, please email me at jooshanoosh [at] gmail [dot] com and I will make sure you are on the list.

Blog going black ops in t-minus 4 days...or round about this weekend when I remember to do it.

All Boy

One of the interesting things about raising children is seeing them become little people, with their own unique personalities that develop before your eyes.  My two boys, raised 18 months apart, could not be more different.  It's easy to see God's hand in all of it.  Noel's ideal day would be staying in his pajamas all day long and lounging about, watching TV, playing computer games and hanging out with his self-proclaimed "best friend":  me.  Jonah's ideal day would be going from one scheduled activity to the next with a huge group of friends, from sun up 'til sun down.  The boy never tires.  If I had two Noels, we'd never get anything done.  I'd spend the whole day dealing with tantrums that are the result of trying to get them out of the house.  If I had two Jonah's, I'd already be dead.  From exhaustion.  Luckily, I have a Jonah and a Noel.  One serves as a calming influence, the other as the pep squad leader.

They have two friends in the ward whom they love.  They all share a love for adventure and, well, being boys.  The other day we headed out to the Jackson Bottom Wetland Preserve.  Our friends were old pros, but we'd never been.

Here we are being instructed by our good friend, Ian, about the many animals we may encounter on our explorations.  Ian knows more about birds than I know about. . .pretty much anything.  He also appears to be quite an engaging instructor, as seen by the looks on the boys' faces.  You can also see their "pets" under their arms, which they're sadly coming to the realization will be their only pets, until they're adults and don't care that their parents won't come visit them because they have a dog.

Lila loved it.  Because she loves everything.

So determined, yet so carefree.  P.S.  Apparently wetlands are real pretty.

Thank you, boys, for showing us a new spot that we loved.  And most of all, thanks for being such great friends!

Bike Time

Noel hasn't ever had much interest in bike riding. Jonah wanted a bike as soon as he could walk, but Noel has been happy to ride his Dora the Explorer big wheel that we bought him when he was about 2. But he's been getting move adventurous lately, and after bribing Jonah to ride the bigger bike so the little bike was available to Noel, we put the training wheels on to see what would happen. 

He started out getting stuck in the edge of the grass a few times. Fortunately, Lila was in a helmet to make sure everyone stayed safe. She's also rocking some jeggings. 

Oops.

Jonah tried to make the event more challenging by speeding up and down the sidewalk at top speed on his scooter yelling "GET OUT OF MY WAY!" 

Lila continued to be on safety patrol, making sure that helmets were in place on all. It's the law here. And it's just good sense. 

Seriously - how cute are those jeggings? And the polka dot puddle jumpers?

But eventually, he got the hang of it.

Are you wondering yet why Lila was in a helmet? So were we. 

Milestones

This post is long overdue. Just wanted to share a few milestones in Jonah's life. Here he is on his way to his first field trip at the Portland Zoo. This is how Jonah demonstrates a look of "I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself." Seriously.

Here he is before he walked out the door to his Kindergarten "Graduation". He was so mad at me that I made him wear that shirt. He couldn't believe I made him dress up. Um, what? But I don't care. He looks so handsome, it was worth the abuse.

This is during his class performance. Once again, he is towering above his fellow students. But also, isn't he the cutest? Even if he's dressed like a server from T.G.I.Fridays? That piece of red flair on the upper left corner of his chest is kind of like the honor roll of Kindergarten. He had to learn 100 words to get it. And there were only four of them (and he was the only boy). I'm just pointing that out as an interesting fact. Not to brag. And the boy on the far left is Reece. His best friend and boy he still doesn't understand why he can't marry. I mean, he likes snakes! That's his only criteria for marriage, and so far no girl has demonstrated this super important characteristic.

And here he is singing "You're a Grand Old Flag." I think they were singing that song in the Egyptian times. But his teacher is a little old school. They also sang God Bless America almost every morning. I think you can get arrested for that, right? Watch for some awesome sign language and some understated hip-swinging.